Picture this:

A small community foundation ran a year-end giving campaign every December and counted on it for 60 percent of their annual revenue. Then December came in light — the economy was rough, the campaign email went to the spam folder for half the list, and attendance at the giving event was down. They ended the year $8,000 below target.

The organizations that weathered that same year without a crisis had one thing in common: monthly donors. Revenue that doesn't depend on one campaign, one event, or one email going to the right place.

Recurring donations are the most financially stabilizing thing a small nonprofit can build, and most never set them up because they don't know where to start.

Quick answer: Add a 'make this a monthly gift' option to your donation page with prominent placement — not buried at the bottom. Suggest lower amounts than your one-time gifts ($10–$25/month is a realistic starting point for most small orgs). Ask past one-time donors to convert. Follow up on failed payments within a week. Send an annual thank-you letter to every monthly donor with their giving total.

Why Monthly Donors Are Different

A one-time donor gives once. You celebrate, send a thank-you, and put them back in the pool hoping they'll give again next year.

A monthly donor gives every month without you doing anything. Over a year, a donor who gives $20/month gives $240 — more than most one-time donors give. Over five years, they give $1,200. And they do it automatically, reliably, without a campaign, without an event, without a year-end email.

Small nonprofits that build monthly donor programs — even small ones — become significantly more financially stable and less dependent on any single fundraising event.

What Your Donation Platform Needs to Support

Not every donation tool handles recurring gifts the same way. Before you set anything up, confirm your platform supports:

Automatic recurring charges — the platform charges the donor's card on the chosen schedule without any action from you or the donor
Donor self-management — donors can update their card, change their amount, or cancel without calling you
Failed payment handling — the platform retries failed charges automatically and notifies you when a charge can't be collected
Recurring gift records — your admin view shows who has active recurring gifts, their amount, and payment status

If your current platform doesn't support these, it's not a true recurring program. It's a scheduled email campaign asking people to give again.

Potluck's donation pages support recurring billing built on Stripe — which handles all of the above automatically.

Setting Up Your Donation Page

The recurring option needs to be visible, not buried.

What works:

A toggle at the top of the donation form: "Give once / Give monthly"
A checkbox directly above the submit button: "Make this a recurring monthly gift"
Separate suggested amounts for one-time and monthly, with monthly defaulting to lower numbers

What doesn't work:

Mentioning recurring giving only in a paragraph of text below the form
Requiring donors to call or email to set up a recurring gift
Hiding the option in a dropdown or settings menu

The goal is for a donor to be able to set up a monthly gift in the same number of clicks as a one-time gift.

What Monthly Amount to Suggest

The instinct is to suggest the same amounts as your one-time gifts. That's usually too high.

A donor who gives $100 once will often pause at $100/month — that's $1,200 a year, and it feels like a commitment. The same donor will often say yes to $10 or $15/month without hesitation, because the monthly amount feels manageable even though the annual total is similar.

Suggested starting amounts for small nonprofits:

$5/month ("less than a coffee")
$10/month ("the cost of one meal")
$25/month ("covers one food box")

Tie the amounts to something concrete if you can. "$10 a month stocks our pantry with enough to serve one family every week" is more compelling than "$10/month."

Asking One-Time Donors to Convert

The easiest monthly donors to get are people who already gave you money once.

They already like you. They already trust you enough to have given. The ask is smaller than acquiring a new donor from scratch.

How to ask: A personal email or letter from your president or treasurer is the highest-converting format:

"Dear [Name] — thank you again for your generous gift in [year]. Your support made a real difference. I'm writing to ask if you'd consider converting your annual gift to a monthly one. Even $10 a month would provide [specific impact]. Here's a link to set it up in about a minute: [link]. Of course, if annual giving works better for you, we're grateful for that too."

Send this once, to your list of past donors. Follow up once if they haven't responded in two weeks. Don't send it more than twice — it starts to feel like pressure.

Retaining Monthly Donors

Monthly donors lapse when they feel forgotten or when their card fails.

What to do:

Send an annual thank-you letter in January with their full year's giving total and the IRS-required acknowledgment
Mention them specifically in your annual report or meeting: "We have [X] sustaining monthly supporters"
Send a brief note on the anniversary of their first gift, if your platform makes this easy to track
Monitor for failed payments weekly — a donor whose card fails and doesn't hear from you for a month is likely to cancel

What not to do:

Don't send them the same fundraising appeals you send to everyone else without acknowledging they already give monthly
Don't ignore failed payments and hope the donor notices on their own — most won't

Common Questions

How do monthly donors affect our 990-N filing? Your 990-N reports gross receipts for the year. Monthly donors' contributions count in full — if someone gives $10/month for 12 months, that's $120 in gross receipts. This is straightforward and doesn't require special treatment.

What if someone wants to cancel their recurring gift? Make it easy. Donors who can cancel without calling you are more likely to set up a recurring gift in the first place. If your platform requires you to manually cancel for them, do it promptly and thank them for their past support. A cancelled donor who had a good experience may give again.

Do we need to send a separate receipt for each monthly charge? Best practice is a year-end consolidated statement listing each charge date and amount, plus the annual total and IRS acknowledgment language. Sending 12 individual receipts per year per donor is unnecessary and creates more inbox noise than value.

Potluck's donation pages include recurring monthly giving built in — donors choose their frequency at checkout and the rest is automatic. Free to start.